


Safe and sound with you

by ThePiningTrees



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, A lil bit anal, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prison, Angst, Angst heavy in chapter 5-6, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV) References, Consensual Sex, DinCobb, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff heavy in chapters 1-4, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Keldabe Kiss, Kisses, M/M, Reference to bigotry and drugs in chapter 3, description of blood in chapter 2, hurt!Din
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:35:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28773930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePiningTrees/pseuds/ThePiningTrees
Summary: Originally this was a 5+1 kisses WIP, now let’s say it’s detectives Din and Cobb (former marshal with a conservative upbringing) who are in love, we’re talking Santa Clarita love. There’s time skips in their relationship, leading up to the day everything fucking crashes and Cobb’s worst fears are realized.We all love Gideon for being such a convincing and convenient villain, right?
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 42
Kudos: 93





	1. Sleepy suburbia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or the calm before the storm, if you will.

It amazes Cobb sometimes, that he would end up here in white picket fence suburbia, with Din Djarin of all slippery bachelor eels. The evolution of their relationship had been glacier slow during their first years together. The first phase was pure silliness: Ranging from sniping at each other by the coffee station like two horny cats on a hot tin roof, stealing cases and stepping on each other’s toes, to blowing off steam together at the end of a shift.   
_Never_ in the back of the cruiser, though, or heaven forbid in the locker room, Din was such a dick-in-office, sadly not literally. They moved on to more frequent hook ups in year two and somewhere at the end of the year Cobb would catch himself smiling for no other reason than a random thought along the lines of Wonder what Din would say, and how he knew exactly what surprise to plan for Din for his birthday.

As corny as it might very well be, Din was the first person he thought of when he woke up in the morning and the last person he thought of when he went to bed at night, and nothing in this world was sweeter than waking up to night-shift Din’s tousled hair and vibrating snores. Din’s scent should always permeate the pillows in Cobb’s bed, where he belonged. Whenever their shifts kept them apart Cobb felt the repercussions, viscerally, but Din never came across as a guy who wanted to settle down. Then Grogu happened, and three years since they met they decided on becoming two adults living in a house with a garden big enough to throw barbecues and kiddie parties in.  
Now Cobb’s most common sighting of his boyfriend is Din padding around the kitchen island in his good slippers asking if Cobb has seen his juice glass, strong arms locking themselves around Cobb’s waist and squeezing. The ensuing kiss tastes like orange pulp and lazy morning randiness. Cobb savors the sting of the morning stubble like he would savor a fine wine. His thumb graces Din’s cheek. ”You need to shave before we leave.”

His palm replaces the thumb and his man closes his eyes, snoozing in the cradle of Cobb’s hand like he’s contemplating skipping work altogether.  
“Din...” Cobb protests and Din’s smile stretches.  
His hands sneak back inside Cobb’s morning robe and rest on his waist. ”Five minutes. I just want to hold you, is that all right?” He yawns and coaxes Cobb closer until there’s no more room between them. 

Cobb laughs, throat vibrating against hard muscles as he hangs his head over Din’s shoulder. He smells incredible. Cobb knows without a doubt that he’s satisfied with what he got, and he hopes Din is too. Judging by the proximity and the stirring activity against his thigh, Cobb thinks he’s got his answer. He gives Din a nudge.  
“I won’t be late for work again. Come on.”

Din grumbles but follows him obediently to the bedroom and most importantly their clothes. Neither of them knows it, but it’s the last morning for a long, long time that they get to share together.   
  



	2. Kov’nyn kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An injury prevents Din from talking AND kissing his boyfriend, but he’s still the uncrowned master of the keldabe kiss, or kov’nyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Rustycat16, thank you for the suggestion.

It’s an ordinary bleak workday, cold light holding Cobb’s desk encased in a casket of Tuesday 3 pm misery when the phone call comes like a bucket of ice cold water. 

_Get down to booking and check on your partner. Ambulance is on their way._

Two things: There’s a medical room attached to the processing area where the FME provides medical care for suspects taking into custody and does the blood work. It’s likely that the shouting that almost drowns out the custody officer’s words are coming from other officers apprehending a suspect who apparently wouldn’t go in quietly. A third, final thing before Cobb’s stomach plummets: Cobb’s partner is standing on the far side of the bullpen chatting and flirting with officer Cara Dune, which means Din is the _partner_ that the custody officer is referring to. 

Having a significant other in the force was bound to bite him in the ass one day—this he’d been told by every other co-worker from the patrol to internal affairs, but so far Cobb had failed to see the problem. Sharing his life with Din meant that he’d always come home to someone who knew what his workday entailed. They shared the same reference frame and accepted the inherent risks of the job. Cobb used to smile politely and wonder what the heck these naysayers were talking about. Until now, when reality hits like a slap in his face. 

When he makes it there the place is in physical disarray and there’s quite a crowd, but there’s relief in the air, a restored equilibrium of calm thanks to his seasoned co-workers ability to shake off the adrenaline from thirty seconds ago. Cobb’s grateful that he’s allowed to ignore the situation and focus on finding Din. There’s bright blood on the linoleum floor, leading inside the medical room. Cobb tries not to think too much of it. It’s not a spray from an artery, but drops and small pools here and there. Fuck. He wants to kill the FME staff for their absence when he crosses the room and heads straight towards the door to the bathroom.

Din stands there leaving bloody handprints on the edge of the sink with a bloody hand, bleeding profusely from either his nose or his mouth or both. He’s tilting his head and shifting between pushing his face under the running water while moving his hand back to stop the blood flow.

”Shit. Let me see,” Cobb urges. He touches Din’s spine, where the shirt is soaked in sweat. 

Din grunts, returns to his administrations with a quick headshake. 

Cobb can’t judge the extent of the injury as long as Din’s back is turned. ”Is it your nose? Fuck, Din, let me see!” he repeats. 

Din glances at him in the mirror and decides to make an effort. ”Mouth… ma lib,” he answers, lisping around the cut. He coughs as blood enters his throat and spits in the sink. Brown, apologetic eyes throw him another glance like he would shrug his shoulder. _Sorry. What can you do?_

Cobb looks at the blood circling the drain and feels lightheaded, which is weird because he’s never had a problem with the sight of body fluids. He was low-key proud about it in high school when he worked extra as a care assistant in a retirement home, and even considered applying to a nursing program after graduation. His lifetime attachment to justice-defending lawmen of the Old west and those values in general won in the long run, but he still knew a bit more about triage than the average cop. His hands tremble slightly as he pulls a drawer in the medical room and picks out a roll of gauze. 

”Put this in your mouth. Keep the pressure on the wound,” he instructs and tries to get a visual of the damage when Din reluctantly lets the gauze in. 

It’s funny how Cobb should be the calm and steady one but it’s Din who sneaks his arm under Cobb’s and puts his hand against the small of Cobb’s back. His fingers scratch and circles reassuringly, holding him there when Cobb’s more than ready to drag Din towards the exit and the ambulance. He leans his forehead against Cobb’s and sighs through his nose. Cobb closes his eyes for a brief second and accepts it, accepts the support.

  
  


It’s not a life-threatening injury by any means, but there’s nothing funny about it. The doctor confirms that it’s a cut that needs stitches but will heal in a few weeks time. Din looks like a busted and bruised basketball, and he won’t be chewing on solid foods for a few days to not risking disturbing the stiches, but he seems fine. Cobb keeps thinking about this, though, whether he wants to or not. He thinks about it on his drive home, and when he’s sitting in the living room staring at a blank tv screen because he hasn’t bothered to turn it on. The routine of Din putting the baby down for the night and sorting laundry doesn’t register because he’s too busy with the thousand and one scenarios where something one day will go horribly wrong. 

He keeps thinking about it when he’s lying rimrod straight in bed at night, increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of falling asleep and risking elbowing Din in his sleep. He feels strangely raw during the week that follows, wearing the badge like a protective armor and arranging his facial muscles to a blank mask so that the people he’s interviewing won’t detect the flayed skin underneath. 

It’s such an unproportional, inappropriate reaction to the circumstances, he knows. He knows. And still. Of course Din notices the change in his mood. Din brings up a stack of post-its from his pocket and huffs while he writes, probably incredulous over the fact that he’s not supposed to speak (’Wouldn’t you know, your day has finally come!’ Cobb had said to him when the doctor gave the advice). Din frowns at what he wrote in silence, then adds another word after some consideration.

Cobb puts his wine glass down and accepts the post-it.

_What is wrong? You look tired._

Ah. ”I didn’t sleep much last night.”

He might have chosen the couch after he realized that he wouldn’t get much sleep in their bed. Set an alarm on the phone at 5:30 so that he could sneak back before Din woke. 

”Got a strain in my back.” 

Din remains silent and intently watching, two qualities in his personality that Cobb usually appreciates. Fell in love with, back when Din was rumored to be a stuck up bore who never bothered to chit-chat with his partners. _Ten minutes in the cruiser with him feels like ten hours,_ his coworkers joke, and in the beginning Cobb had a hard time fusing that reputation with the razor-sharp wits and creative ideas he’d associated with the detective. Din always had a lot to say to Cobb that wasn’t necessarily conveyed through words. His silences were never dull, but now... 

Cobb laughs mirthlessly. ”I miss your… forget it.”

 _I miss your voice. I miss kissing you. Did you know I haven’t kissed you in ten days? That I want to hold you in a bone-crushing embrace at night but I’m afraid to?_ No, he shouldn’t say any of that. He shouldn’t be shook up about this, not something so trivial. He would hate for Din to think that it would be like this now, that he has cracked and become an anxious spouse who would rather prefer that their partner worked in real estate. 

Cobb crumbles the post-it and tosses the ball out of sight. The baby is tucked in for the night and the two of them are having a well-deserved night in front of the tv, so let's not spoil the evening. 

Din looks at the ball wherever it rolled off, nods like this was the deciding factor he was waiting for, and leaves the couch. A moment later music is streaming through the living room: a nice song, a song that would lend itself perfectly to a slow dance. 

Cobb hesitates when he accepts Din’s offer to drag him off the couch, careful to keep a safe distance to Din’s swollen, colorful cheek and busted lip. Din sways him to move with a light hand on his hip, and what was that Cobb kept referring to as silly? This is idiotic, but it doesn’t retract from the secure hold he has on Din’s shoulders and the comforting blast of heat seeping through his shirt and his ribs all the way to the hollow in his chest. It doesn’t retract from the pleasant humming rising from Din’s throat as he hums along with the song. It’s a good album. Cobb lets go of an long exhale as Din’s strong hands wander under his shirt and kneads the tension from the muscles in his back. 

He slides his hand over Din’s chest, palm resting over his beating heart. They continue to find more and more points to connect, foreheads resting together, feet moving seamlessly across the carpet. ”Stay with me tonight?” Din asks him, voice a bit grating but honey to Cobb’s ears. 

”Not when you—” 

”I don’t mind. I promise I’ll hold you still,” Din whispers softly in his ear. ”Do you know what I can’t stop thinking about?” 

Cobb smiles. It feels good to hear the laugh in Din’s voice again. ”What?” 

”Another week, and then I get to kiss you again. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have to kiss you to know that I love you, but I can’t wait. Gonna kiss you all over.” 

The warmth in Cobb’s chest transfers to his face along with a pleasant shiver across his neck. ”Yeah? I think I’ll do the same.”

He thinks he’ll spend hours doing the same, in fact. ”We should practice. Do a dry run to work out the logistics.” He plants a featherlight kiss to Din’s temple. 

Din hums. ”Do you think you could work around it?”

Cobb knows he can, if he’s careful. He plants another kiss below Din’s ear, trailing his lips down to his collar. ”I want to try. Do you want me to try?” He scoots the shirt back and bite-licks the crook of Din’s neck, smiling at the appreciative noise working its way up Din’s throat.

”Yes,” Din confirms, his eyes squeezing shut in pleasure, ”It won’t be a very dry dry run, though.”

And as punishment for that juvenile pun, Cobb grabs his waist but stops himself before he can act on the impulse to tickle him. Din is forbidden to laugh, or he’ll ruin the stitches. ”Don’t laugh. You’re not supposed to laugh!” 

”I’m… I’m not!” 

He is. 


	3. "Patu"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Detective Din accidently adopts a baby with very fuzzy ears and Cobb suffers, because this writer apparently likes to see Cobb Vanth suffer.  
> Mind the tags.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank u Safe_urself_kill_em_all for suggesting the upside down Spiderman kiss. I had a different scenario at first, but at last this is what got jotted down at the end of the week. It's barely a spiderman kiss is it, I'm sorry! :)

Cobb’s parents were, what’s the word he’s looking for… old-fashioned conservatives? Scratch the surface of his childhood and he would cringe at the uncovered racism and bigotry in his parents’ less than well thought out commentary. He still found reasons to love them, because that was family and no one was quitting on the other. He _loved_ his parents. Still, he lived in a state of uncertainty and guilt for years, barely examined, until after he met Din and realized that he was in deep. Cobb could easily imagine spending the rest of his life with that man, _man_ being the secret dirty word here. He felt a stab of guilt at the thought of never living up to his mother’s definition of happiness, namely to show up with his own neat little nuclear family at Sunday dinner.

It was just one of those sorrows that Cobb carefully wrapped up and put away in a drawer in a part of his subconscious he rarely visited, along with that teeny, tiny ache in his chest that suggested he wanted a family as well, and life went on: he went to work, he saw Din there at his desk with a pen in his mouth and a crinkle between his eyebrows making Cobb fall in love with him all over again; they flirted from afar throughout the day and went for dinner after their shifts ended. Together, they carved out a new routine, with the help of new anniversaries and new traditions. Life was fine—more than fine. Then, the rug was pulled from under Cobb’s feet.

A child was looking up at Cobb from a dirty blanket, staring at the tall grown-up with blinking eyes the size of saucers in his otherwise small features. The fuzzy, quivering ears were the only other unproportioned feature on his tiny frame. “What is it?” Din asked, having join Cobb from another room without Cobb noticing. Din, torso padded in a vest, slowly lowered and holstered his firearm.

Cobb shook his head. _A kid, how come their surveillance hadn’t noticed that there was a kid on the premises?_ He had ordered the bust without considering all the facts. “No one heard him on the receiver. He… he must have been sleeping.” The kid chirped in distress and there was that onslaught of emotion again poising Cobb’s veins. _Guilt._ He reached down a hand like he would lift up a puppy from a cardboard box, which earned him another frightened meep. The kid burrowed down in his blanket, out of sight.

Din graced Cobb’s shoulder with a brief pat before he sat down on one knee. He stayed like that for a beat, brow furrowing as he was analyzing the kid’s plight. “Hey, baby… it’s all right.” His voice was warm and quiet. “You had quite a scare, didn’t you.”

It was during those ten minutes of patient cooing that Cobb realized with a shock that Din was a _freaking wizard_ when it came to kids, and Cobb’s heart swelled to the point he could feel the pulse in his temples. From the baby curiously peeking out to check on who was engaging him in this peculiar conversation, to Din choosing just the right moment to bend down and gingerly pick up the baby who snuggled up to his chest with a relieved cluck, Cobb’s love for his boyfriend threatened to utterly destroy his On call professional persona.

“What’s with you?” Xi’an asked when she saw him stand there slack mouthed behind Din and the baby swaddled against his shoulder.

Din hushed and whispered to the kid: “Xi’an is a meanie, and we shouldn’t talk to her. Let’s go and say hello to the paramedics.”

Xi’an scoffed, amused by the friendly barb, but her gaze wandered thoughtfully from Din back to Cobb. Cobb did his best to assume a dignified posture. He felt a bit bewildered by his strong reaction. For once he didn’t wish for Xi’an to back off with her faux psych assessments, but to keep him posted with whatever it was she read in his face.

Din efficiently told the social service worker on call to back off, this by deadpanning them from the top of the child’s wrinkled head, and took him home for the night. No way he was letting a baby spend a night in a sterile hospital room or even with an emergency foster care provider. No, the kid, Grogu, was an orphan with no one to rely on for protection and Din wasn’t prepared to roll the dice on the social services. Home he went, to Din’s bachelor apartment, and Cobb trailed along. Increasingly dazed, if that was a progression that supposedly happened.

It wasn’t long before the word _adoption_ was brought up.

“You can’t raise a child in a…” Cobb sat cross-legged on the floor of Din’s cramped living room and watched Din slide further and further down the couch on his quest to keep the kid from crawling under the furniture. It had been two weeks and they were already playing like they had known each other in a past life. Grogu seized a balled-up sock (cleaned? Lets go with cleaned) and _patu’ed_ with laughter as Din caught him before he had the chance to run off. “You can’t use up your vacation days forever. Raising kids take like, like _years…!_ Or so I’ve heard,” Cobb mumbled, uncertain.

“18 years.” Din let go of Grogu’s one-piece. He gave Cobb one of his piercing, I know something you don’t looks that Cobb considered was quite a feat considering Din managed to do it while laying with his neck outside the couch. “People do it all the time. Raise families… you don’t think we’re up for it?”

Cobb oof:ed as the kid ran right up to him, his head bouncing off Cobb’s stomach. Cobb collected the tiny marauder without breaking eye-contact with Din. “…what?” he asked weakly.

Din rightened himself up, planting his feet on the carpet and flooring Cobb with the hard to resist sight of Playtime Din: disheveled hair, still wearing the same sweatpants he slept in. Din scratched the top of his hair, carding his fingers through the mess in a recognizable effort to calm his nerves. He took a deep breath and lowered his hand. “Do you want to? Raise a family?”

None of them were good at these talks. Cobb possessed enough self-awareness to know that much. “…together?”

Grogu patted his face with cool hands, distracting Cobb from hearing the specifics in Din’s exhaled expletive. “I shouldn’t push this on you. You’re white as a sheet.” He got up from the couch, humiliation blooming on his own cheeks.

“ _Patu,”_ the baby added, touching Cobb's face with more care.

Cobb met Grogu’s expressive saucer eyes. “Patu,” he managed in response.

He felt the precursory of love right then and there like the bright flash of clarity before a fall; already he knew deep down that he wouldn’t be able to let go of this little one, with the same certainty he knew he could never let go of Din. He leaned his head back as he felt Din come to a stop behind him, resting against Din’s knee as he met Din’s downcast gaze, worry and anxiety simmering under dark lashes.

“Come down here.” Cobb reached a hand up to coax Din to meet him halfway. Din sat down on his knees, never disconnecting the contact with Cobb’s back, and Cobb tilted his head, allowing Din to gently cup his chin so they could meet in a kiss that held all the apologies and reassurances they couldn’t verbalize.

Din’s arms came around Cobb’s, holding both man and green baby in an embrace that lasted for a long time. 


	4. Nine-nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s pre-relationship days. Cobb attempts to woo Din with garlic bread, and frankly everyone is out to make Din’s life more difficult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank u Safe_urself_kill_em_all who is responsible for the “tearsteaked kisses” suggestion!
> 
> I don’t know who reads this disastrous wip, but next chapter will be what’s in my drafts as “the prison au”, so if anyone has kissing suggestions, there’s your inspiration.

They are in the bullpen, eating stale sandwiches and bullshitting at their desks because they both missed lunch and there had been _way_ too many trips to the coffee machine. 

“Nope. You’re too polite and charming to be a perp.” Din hides his smile under the moustache, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Remember the time when—”

“That was _one time,_ ” Cobb throws his balled-up plastic wrap at him to cut the nostalgia short, “is it really that weird to say _May I have some cocaine?”_

Din’s eyes soften even as he gives Cobb’s forehead a flick and rolls out of the retaliation zone in his office chair. “I was going to say—remember those tight jeans you wore? _Oya_. And the short shirt?” 

“Crop top,” Cobb huffs and smooths out the nonexistent wrinkles on his dark dress shirt. He upped his dress code when he left the marshal’s office. Never looked back. 

“You were cute in it.” 

Cobb snorts, his cheeks burning hotter by his own walk down _that_ particular memory lane. “That’s the one word I _didn’t_ hear come out of your mouth when—”

”No. No, no, no!” Migs, Din’s partner, juts his finger. ”You two shut up!” 

Din scratches his neck and blushes, but Migs is the one near blowing a casket. Cobb resumes a dignified stance by putting his feet up on the desk. “No offense because I care about you, Migsy. You’ve seemed a bit upset these last few days. Did Lindsley ever call you back?” 

Migs looks down at his hands with a frown. “No,” he mutters. 

Din grimaces in sympathy. “Oh. Sorry. Want to talk about it?”

Lindsley is Migs’ ex wife and Din has been highly invested from the start. They are best buddies according to Migs, and when push comes to shove Din won’t deny it. Cobb is secretly thrilled at how relaxed and talkative Din allows himself to be nowadays, compared to when they first met. 

_Some hand-waved years ago..._

Cobb was the new hire, and was preceded by quite a reputation due to his career in federal law enforcement. His co-workers proved to be a welcoming, friendly bunch who never missed an opportunity to invite him into a conversation and ask for stories from his time as a marshal. With the exception of Din, the office recluse and the definition of _tall, dark and mysterious_ . He kept to himself unless the subject was work, and the opinions of his reticence varied greatly. It irritated Cobb that someone, who by the way had twice the solved cases rate as the most seasoned detective, wasn’t allowed to keep his private life private without being subjected to gossip. ….Not that _he_ ever was guilty of concocting increasingly wild theories in his own head, did he _never_ zoom out while detective Djarin was walking the squad through a briefing, oh no, sir.

Cobb’s descent into pining really began in his second month at his new workplace (and it was all Din’s fault). He stood with a coffee in hand and made friendly with Xi’an and Migs Mayfeld, while being highly aware that he was being watched by detective Djarin across the bullpen. Cobb knew what it looked like ( _should_ look like): The combination of both Xi’an and Migs’ brash personalities should be enough to keep him engaged in conversation, while socially inadequate _would-never-make-scene_ Djarin spent his time staring at them from the safety of his desk. 

It wasn’t like that, at all. Djarin could duck his mop of dark, tousled hair all he wanted and diligently write his report like his life depended on it, but he still couldn’t cover up the fact that he was stealing glances in their direction. And Cobb was oddly affected by it. What caused a blush to dust his cheeks and made him weirdly aware of where to put his limbs every time he brought the cup to his mouth or shifted posture to lean back against his desk was the fact that the glances weren’t fueled by anger. Din looked up at Xi’an’s pealing laughter and Migs’ mildly offensive innuendos, but his eyes were curious and more focused at reading Cobb’s reactions than to order them back to work. 

As it happened, Cobb got a first row seat to Din’s social awkwardness when their captain and boss, Leia Organa, walked out of her office and stopped by Din’s workstation on her way out. 

  
  


“Djarin. I’m off for the day.” No response. “Djarin.” Leia sighed at her top detective’s stupefied expression. She was a mother of two and didn’t have time for her detectives’ grown-up version of pulling pigtails and crying in the bathroom stall. 

She waved her hand in front of Din’s face until he twirled his head and blinked at her in surprise. Leia decided to ignore Migs and Xi’an’s sniggering. Din was a grown man—they were nearly the same age, in fact—and more than capable of taking care of himself. 

“It’s my day to pick up the twins from school. I’m counting on you to hold the fort, detective.” _Detective._ That reminded her. She put her hand on the desk and leaned forward. “Have you thought over my offer?”

Din looked left and right without moving his head. Quite inconspicuously if you ask him. Not if you ask her. “Uhm… no, I was under the impression that I was given twenty four hours?” He cleared his throat. “Captain.”

Leia shook her head. How did this man decide which pants to wear in the morning, she’d never know, but his heart was in the right place. Not to mention the excellent solved cases ratio and the impeccable work ethics that put his colleagues to shame. “You’re the right man for this position, Din. Don’t let me catch you doubting yourself.” 

“No, ma’am. I mean, yeah...sure.” Din watched her go with a constipated expression and then slumped forward, burying his head in his arms with a pitiful groan. He didn’t move when Cobb neared. On the contrary, he grew uncomfortably still when Cobb sat down close-by. 

“That was intense.” 

He was answered by an incoherent mumble from within the arms.

“Say that again?”

Din lifted his head, back bumping the backrest and hair askew. “She’s making me take the sergeant test. So I can be her second in command.” The _god, why me_ wasn’t said but it was heavily implied. 

“Huh.” Cobb tapped a finger to his lips, covering the smile that wanted to burst through. “I may be new, but I’m pretty sure you already are her second in command.” 

“Not by choice!”

Cobb didn’t know what gave him the impression, perhaps it was the result of all the countless little things he had observed that made him say what he said with passion. “No. You just can’t help yourself, can you. I have seen you pick up everyone’s slack. You even take on additional minor cases because you know there are victims waiting for answers. I think you and I both know you deserve this promotion, whether you decide to accept it or not.” 

There was a pause, a long, awkward pause where Din’s face shifted between reactions and Cobb questioned his life choices.

“Thank you for your concern, but it doesn’t matter what my answer will be. The chief commissioner hates my guts.” 

Cobb blew a low whistle, knowing he risked coming off as a douche. “Politics,” he summarized, because he didn’t think of something better to contribute with. He was still in shock that Djarin was still talking to him. “Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you turned it down. It would save you a lot of headaches.” He knew in his heart that Djarin wouldn’t. That wasn’t how he operated: he had a bleeding heart. Seemed to lack a proper on/off switch for these things.

“Yeah. Headaches.” Din looked down, the trace of a crooked smile vanishing as he returned to his case file. 

One sort of successful conversation with Din Djarin didn’t make them friends. Din kept ducking out of everything non-work related and Cobb didn’t pressure, although… he nudged, a little bit, now and then. Barely. Cobb couldn’t help that he was like a moth to the flame, all right? And the flame was the allure of having Din genuinely smile at something or other. 

Their first sort of non work related conversation was about garlic bread and went down in the personnel kitchen. It might be the weirdest conversation Cobb had to date, but what didn’t you do for love/the people whose pants you wanted to rip off ( _woah, there, where did that come from?_ ).

“Let’s see what we got here…” he stared intensely at the microwave, watching his plate go around, round, round... he sang the lyrics to a nursery rhyme he knew by heart before the sharp (radioactive?) light got him back on track. “The garlic bread needs to go in the toaster oven eight minutes before the lasagna is done. This microwave is a KitchenPro Max, but she might not be what she once was... I’m guessing 1.2 kilowatts in her prime.” He straightened his back and turned around to face Din with the professional air of a repair man. “How long have you had it, do you know?” 

His smile was walking a thin line between _I’m messing with you_ and _I’m dead serious about my garlic bread._ Din stared back at him with a skeptical expression. He was sitting at the small table closest to the microwave, an open file in front of him and a stale coffee forgotten beside it. 

That was another thing Cobb had noticed: Din usually made himself unavailable by either being mentally preoccupied with his caseload or literally bringing a file with him to read over lunch. Most of the department had given up on addressing him when it didn’t directly concern work, but Cobb hadn’t been around long enough to learn that lesson, had he. 

Din glanced at the innocent microwave, then quickly cut back to the file. “I have no idea.”

Cobb sighed dramatically. “You don’t understand, this is a family recipe. I made them from scratch. With my bare hands,” Cobb held up his hands to give Din a proper view. Preview. As it were.

Din huffed. “You won’t have time to eat that. Wait. When did we get a toaster oven?”

“I bought it three weeks ago. You would’ve noticed if you spent more than seven minutes eating lunch. In other than liquid form.”

They both averted their eyes from the offensive coffee cup, the same way they would keep a tasteful distance to a stranger arguing on the phone in public. 

“This might be my subtle attempt to share my garlic bread with you,” Cobb added and pirouetted back to face the microwave before his unruly emotions betrayed him. _Time and place, Marshal. There’s no blushing in workplace kitchens._

“I’m not that hungry.” The sudden gurgling noise coming from Din’s stomach begged to differ. 

Which probably was why (and for no other reason _at all_ ) Din willingly accepted a fork exactly eight minutes later, and half of Cobb’s lasagna. The bread tasted like hot, gooey decadence, but watching Din relax and talk somehow burned hotter in Cobb’s gut. 

Of course, someone had to ruin it. Sergeant Djarin (who’s surprised? Not Cobb) had just finished walking them through their current top-prioritized case in the briefing room and asked everyone to drink responsibly at tonight’s Halloween office party, please (he’s so _polite_ , Cobb thought with a wistful sigh, because months had past and there was _still_ nothing to report from the west front), when Migs Mayfeld raised a hand and asked to address the floor. 

Din gave him the lectern and leaned against the doorframe, probably to secure an exit if Migs ended up burning it down in a fit of rage. Cobb knew enough by then to know that Djarin and Mayfeld were friends with a complicated history. 

Mayfeld pretended to adjust the tie he never wore. ”Some of you may wonder what got me through suspension,” he began, earning a long suffering sigh from Din. ”Was it my family? _Pfft_ , don’t be ridiculous. My girlfriend? Nah, she bailed. My so called best friend? _You would think._ ” 

”Migs,” Din warned. ”Save that for later?”

”As I was _saying_ . The only thing that kept me sane was the charity of my _former_ best friend,” he motioned to Din, who hid behind his hand, ”and the promise that once he’d cleared my name we would celebrate by bringing back the old Halloween tradition of: the Treasure hunt.”

An obnoxiously bright and loud slide appeared on the PowerPoint.

There were excited murmurs from the audience. Din pinched his nose. ”I don’t allow it.” 

”Come on, Sarge. Get your undies out of your buns and relax. Trust me, you will be on the wrong side of history if you ban this tradition.” Yeah, Cobb was beginning to see now what got Migs suspended in the first place.

Din pushed himself off the doorframe. ”Shut up, or I’ll kick you off my couch— I’ll kick you,” he amended clumsily.

And now these two were regressing to their college dorm room dynamic. Also, since when was Mayfeld sleeping on Din’s couch? 

Migs switched slides to a scanned photocopy of a necklace of some kind, with an animal head in silver. There were informative bullet points underneath. Migs cheerfully began distributing pages with the same image, not caring that Din was just standing there, staring at the screen and going whiter than a ghost.

”The objective is to have it in your possession by midnight. Clues are distributed around the building and will lead you to the treasure. Any questions may be directed at me or Djarin. Actually, direct all questions and concerns at him. He is the boss afterall.” 

”Tell us about the objective,” someone demanded. 

Migs held up a page. “This necklace carries great emotional significance to our dear leader, or whatever. It will be yours to barter with—may it be a shift switch, getting off early to catch that game or similar favors within the bounds of reason. It will be up to the winner to choose the prize.” 

Look, Cobb was all for an evening of fun and games, but not at Din’s expense. The rest of his squad were also looking at Din to gauge his reaction and whether they should support this temporary mutiny or not. The members in Din’s own team were wearing faces of respect and sympathy. Cara looked like she was ready to throw a pen in Mayfeld’s throat.

A small shudder went over Din’s tense shoulders and he shrugged. ”Fine. You’re going down, Mayfeld. You know I will win.”

That may be the most unenthusiastic declaration of war Cobb ever heard. Not that anyone else cared.

“That’s the spirit!” Migs raised his fist in the air and the room cheered. “Victory shall be mine!” He pointed at his colleagues one by one. “None of you have a chance against me. No courage, no patience—“ Din scowled and Xi’an hissed “—no brains,” officer Toro Calican looked behind him, where there was an empty wall, “no…no...” Migs wiggled his finger at Cobb, who crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, promising violent retribution with his eyes. Migs gestured dismissively at Boba, Greef and Ashoka: “You three I’ll need the help of a psychiatrist to unwrap. You’re dismissed.” 

“Why, because it won’t even be a competition if I’m in it?” Ashoka asked mildly. 

_Greef Karga is the real joker in the bunch_ , Cobb thought. _He could win… but the open bar will likely be his downfall._ Damn it, now he started to think strategy like he would actually participate in this madness. He would rather put some distance between himself and what clearly made his superior uncomfortable, only Din had a look in his face that made Cobb want to carry out the threat Din had started. 

It took some clever thinking, and the mature decision to not drink any Halloween themed jello shots (fine, he had one, but he sincerely wished he hadn’t), before Cobb manned up enough to pull Din aside. Din looked confused and a bit tongue-tied when Cobb dragged him out of the bullpen, but he did walk with him without a word of protest. Cobb doubted that the man noticed the stray pink party ribbons stuck to his sweater and hair. 

The party was loud, and the music horrendous, which meant Cobb had set up the base of operations in Interrogation room C. Empty, quiet, and at the end of a corridor nobody frequented. He herded Din inside and closed the door with a relieved sigh. 

“We can talk freely in here. I have already commenced phase one in operation: get the necklace back.” 

Din looked at the table where Cobb’s scribbly schematics of the evidence room were on display along with a half-empty beer, and back at Cobb with a scowl. “Why would I listen to you? You could be double-crossing me.” 

Wow, his distrust in his coworkers really went deep, huh. “Why would I do that? I’m offering you my assistance with no ulterior motives.” 

“No ulterior motives? Seems pretty suspicious to me.”

Cobb huffed in disbelief. “Let me get this straight… Your definition of suspicious is when a guy has _no_ ulterior motives?”

Din’s head made a very judgemental _you know what I mean_ tilt. Cobb chose to take that as encouragement, thank you, and pointed at his maps. “The evidence room. I know for a fact that Migs paid it a visit yesterday, but nothing was filed in any of his ongoing cases. I looked it up. Then I figured that he must have filed the neckla— the treasure under some bogus label, and I was right. Everyone’s out there searching for the clues that I think will spell out that label, but I propose we go for the motherload.”

There were more than one X marked on the map, though. A lot more. Din raised an eyebrow in a silent question. 

“Yeah… He made twenty-seven of them, which makes him almost as paranoid as you.” Cobb grinned. “So what do you say, partner, you want to take thirteen or fourteen?” 

Din shook his head and stepped back. “I’m not participating in the hunt.”

“What? Why? It’s _your_ necklace.” 

“It’s a pendant.” 

“Of course. It’s _your_ pendant, and it drives me insane thinking Mayfeld will get away with another one of his bullshit stunts. Don’t tell me you don’t care what happens to it.”

“I’ll get it back tomorrow.”

The worst part was that Cobb couldn’t tell anymore if Din was serious or not, unaffected or fucking breaking inside. He had gotten so good lately at keeping his face in check and shutting off the light in his eyes that it was scary, and more than a little bit upsetting. Cobb thought about accusing his drunk co-workers of all sorts of ill-advised shenanigans with the pendant as collateral damage. Throwing it off the roof, flushing it down the toulet—were those realistic scenarios that could happen or just Cobb flailing to grasp something he didn’t even know the shape of? Didn’t realize the gravity of? 

“Help me find it and I trade you for it.” The suggestion was illogical and no, why would Din go for it when his option offered— _unless!_ “I promise you will know instantly what kind of reward I’m asking,” he said excitedly, “You don’t have to wait for days or possibly weeks until someone makes up their mind, and you don’t risk them asking something you don’t want to do.”

Din regarded Cobb with a little doubting wrinkle in his brow that Cobb refused to find cute.

“What’s your reward?” He asked after a long silence that made Cobb aware that they were having these negotiations in the interrogation room. Past midnight, as a party raved on outside. It almost brought him back to high school. Sneaking off to be alone… in a janitor’s closet… he licked his lips, wondering _what would I ask for if I could?_

It might be the bad lighting, but he could’ve sworn Din was looking at his lips while swallowing with a _click_ in his throat. 

Cobb panicked and squeezed past him. “I’ll tell you when we find it… that’s the deal.”

Din sighed and looked briefly to the ceiling. “That’s the deal.”

“Have you found it yet?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“Found it?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

…

“Found it!”

Or, maybe he found it? As Cobb examined the strange wooden box in his hands he became more and more confident that it was some sort of clever contraption, an enigma box, for him to solve. The pendant was waiting for him patiently within. 

He sat down on the hard floor between two overstocked shelves and put the flashlight in his mouth. (Because why switch on the lights and alert people where they were, and you couldn’t clandestinely crawl through an evidence room without the proper accessories.) 

He heard Din putting back boxes and locking up a unit further away. The pieces in the box rotated. _This is going great!_ Cobb was the master of riddles and jigsaws, everyone could go home, he thought, right before there was a sharp _hiss_ and a spray of liquid hit him square between the eyes. 

Pepper spray—It burns. 

Cobb scrambled backwards across the floor and instinctively put his hands in his face though he knew his digging fingers would only irritate the eyes and mucous membranes of his nose to swell up more. 

A moment later he was tugged to his feet by a furious-sounding Din. “I’m going to fucking kill Migs!”

“It burns,” Cobb managed to get out. Hot tears ran down his face and met in his beard. “ _Evvveryyywheereee.”_

“That’s the whole sale pitch, Vanth. Hold on and I’ll get you under a shower.” 

Cobb let himself be blindly dragged through corridors. Din was a solid frame pressed to his side. “Don’t touch your face.”

“But I’m blind, Djarin! I’m blind!”

“Still no reason for you to touch it. Watch your step.” Din maneuvered him into the locker room with an efficient hip-check. 

“I can touch it if I want to!” Cobb complained. He needed the distraction. 

“Then touch it, you idiot.” Din turned on the closest shower and checked the temperature. 

“I’m feeling like Nicolas Cage in that movie where his head was on fire.” Cobb spit as water entered his mouth. “I’m drowning.”

“You’re not. Try to hold your breath for a moment.”

Din cupped Cobb’s neck and tilted him backwards to let water stream down his face. 

Cobb was slowly becoming aware of the fingers entangled in his neck hair and the snug hold Din had on him, preventing Cobb from slipping on the tiles and cracking his head open. He dared to open his eyes to slits, discovering the intense look of concentration that had taken over Din’s features. Cobb felt an irrational need to caress his cheek and tell him he was doing a mighty fine job. 

Fantasizing of caressing his ranking officer. Sergeant. Shit. Career-change wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. At least, it wasn’t supposed to include these sorts of complications. 

“How are you feeling, Cobb?” Din had switched to his first name. “Can you see me clearly?” 

Din cradled Cobb’s face in his hands, stroking excess water from his cheeks and eyebrows. An errant thumb swept over a bottom lip. Din’s pupils dilated from the touch, and Cobb felt his own body respond with a lurch in his gut. Din’s gaze that could burn holes through Cobb from a distance of the bullpen, zeroed in on him now like it was live or die. 

Cobb shivered in his wet and heavy shirt, missing Din’s warm arms around his midsection. The motion let a small but significant exhale past his lips. 

“I’ll trade it from you now,” Din said quietly. 

Cobb grinned. “With what?” He whispered, hoarse throat out of left field. Might have been the pepper spray. 

Din went for a casual shrug and self deprecating smile. “I don’t want to laugh in the face of all the harassment seminars we’ve had recently, but would you consider trading it for a kiss?”

 _Now hold on, why didn’t I think of that?_ “...right now?”

“Right now.”

Cobb nodded.

Din leaned forward, and they kissed in the shower on the fourth floor of the precinct where they both worked. It kinda burned (a lot, oh god, it burned _a lot!_ ), but neither of them recoiled despite the fact, so Cobb counted that as a win. 

  
  


_Back to present time_

“Where did you go off to?” Din asks. He chuckles at how Cobb dazedly licks his lips and clears his throat. 

Cobb pulls at his collar. _Is it hot in here?_ “I was just wondering whether I should take a shower.” 

“Woah, heads up,” Migs warns. He’s the first to notice the five men entering the pen. “Management looks like he’s out for blood.”

Cobb sees the subtle change on Din’s face before he turns around: the fall of the corners of his gentle mouth and the flinch as his eyes widen minutely, then the revert back to the withdrawn and neutral mask he used to wear 24/7. 

Cobb looks over his shoulder to discover chief commissioner Gideon standing there, flanked by four officers in tactical gear. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I straight up steal a bounch of lines from Brooklyn nine-nine? You bet your sweet ass I did.


	5. The ghost of a kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cobb Vanth's worst fears are realized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OohChild requested Angst and Hurt which I LOVE :) Fyi, this chapter is mostly about planting ticking bombs and angst, almost no comfort.  
> I can say this is angst with a happy ending in the next chapter, and I'll even go as far as to promise reunion sex before we wrap up and go home.

Ordinary moments can shatter in the matter of seconds. Every emergency responder who’s ever responded to a call or arrived first to the scene are aware of this fact. There were more or less recommendable ways to deal with the emotional strain, of course. Cobb carved out his own little pockets of safety. He just had to close his eyes to imagine himself back in the living room sofa under a large throw blanket, cozy and warm in Din’s arms and the kid curled on his chest. The bullpen with his co-workers was another safe space. As it turns out, both of those havens are threatened when chief commissioner Gideon speaks. His cold eyes find Din across the distance and never moves as he reads the charges in a volume that demands an audience.

“Din Djarin. You are hereby charged with the murder of Bernard Kuiil, and several offenses pertaining to the obstruction of justice and bribery. Arrest him.” 

The four officers leave their protective positions around the commissioner and surrounds them. 

This must be some kind of weird dream or elaborate prank. Chief commissioner Gideon is a recognizable face to Cobb but not much else. He never bothered to learn the politics of the police department. (‘I’m too old to learn new tricks’, he’d said to Din, who retorted with ‘You’re not a dog’. ‘I’m a marshal at heart, a bloodhound, but don’t you worry.’ Cobb patted his chest. ‘There’s plenty of room for you in here.’)

Cobb actually looks at Migs hopefully before he thinks better of it and steps between Din and the approaching officers with his hand raised.

“Oh, no you don’t! Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

He looks at the commissioner, whose lower face is twisting in a way Cobb’s brain is having trouble to compute. Is he _smiling?_

Din does something martial artsy with Cobb that he’ll never be able to master, even when Din moves the coffee table to teach him how the marshal got nothing on Din’s speed and fluent movements. 

Din pulls him close, whispering “Cobb, please, stand down.” His hand squeezes Cobb’s neck in a gesture that’s supposed to be comforting, but he’s interrupted by rough hands tearing at his shoulders. 

“Do not resist!” They force him to kneel with a lock around his arms.

“This is excessive!” Cobb finds himself staring at not one but two automatic rifles. For some reason they came prepared to meet resistance to arrest; to arrest a criminal, not one of their own. 

Din’s arms are bent to maximum strain behind his back. He resists until the commissioner strides closer and says something in his ear.

Din listens intently through sharp gasps and pulse pounding in his chest. Shoulders slump as the will to fight are drained from him. He finds Cobb’s face in the cacophony and mess the bullpen has been reduced to. He gives a short headshake, a silent message but for once it’s a message Cobb can’t decode. It’s the first window into a shadow life that he hasn’t been given access to. 

“Stand down, Vanth. I said stand down!” Organa orders, and that at least is a language Cobb understands. He removes his hand from the firearm at his hip—hadn’t even realized he had put it there. 

“Go home,” Din begs him as he’s led past, and he means _go home to the baby._ Sergeant Djarin may be apprehended and powerless, but his parental instincts operate on a deeper level, burning bright and clear as the stars in the sky. 

“Affirmative,” Cobb replies dryly, a strange phrase that has never been his own. _This isn’t right._ He glares at Commissioner Gideon _. You’ll regret this._ He looks at Organa, and she looks back, holds his gaze as Din is escorted out. 

The commissioner is the last one to leave. He turns around, not able to resist the urge to address the crowd one more time. “This is a warning and a reminder,” he sends a stern look around the room, although the leer is evident in his face, “for everyone who considers themselves a member of this force to trust and uphold our established procedures, and to never cross that line of morality into the territory in which our enemy operates. Bad decisions _will_ catch up on you, and justice will have the last word.”

There is an unsure murmur among the gathered, mingling with the obedient ‘Yes, commissioner’.

Cobb’s face burns with anger and offense. Din is the most decent officer _and_ human being out of all of them, which couldn’t be said about the chief commissioner. How dare he plant doubt concerning Din’s character?

“Din Djarin is not a dirty cop.” It’s hissed between his teeth, his voice unrecognizable. Migs puts a hand on his shoulder, as a precaution, but it serves to calm to a degree. 

Gideon’s smugness grows as he looks straight at Cobb. “How would you know? I trust you not to have been involved in his dealings.” He raises his brow.

 _I’m his spouse. I know him._ Cobb swallows down every word of defense. He has none. He is biased.

The only thing that matters is proof of innocence, and Cobb swears he will get it. 

The bail is set at astronomical figures. They argue over it through an unsatisfactory phone call—Cobb with his hands free and scowling at Grogu’s food heating on the stove, Din from a box in the state penitentiary. 

“The bank knows we are good for it.” Cobb stirs the marinated frog legs with a spoon to ease the neat off the bones. He doesn’t care what the pediatrician says—his kid will _not_ be at risk of choking on a bone. 

“No they don’t.”

“We can sell the house. We’ll need the money to pay for a lawyer,” Cobb points out, because someone has to say it. It kills him that Din will likely blame himself for the situation they’re in. The silence on the other end confirms it. 

“Our savings are better spent on a future for Grogu,” Din says at last. He sounds tired but weirdly determined, like he’s already had plenty of time to think this over and accept his fate.

A surprised, hollow laugh escapes Cobb. “I don’t think you realize how fucked up this situation is. You’re, you’re facing a life sentence, you’re facing the chair.” He follows his knees' advice and sits down on the floor, head resting against the cutlery drawer. _I can’t do this without you. I'm going fucking insane_. “The commissioner has it in for you for some reason. You _need_ a good lawyer.”  
More tense silence. 

“What the hell is his problem? Din? Why you?” 

“I have to go, Cobb, my time’s out. I love you.” 

Cobb doesn’t know if he should protest or give in and pretend everything’s still fine. When he’s made up his mind, the line is dead. 

*

Cobb looks himself over in the mirror. The awful charcoal suit makes him come off like a crossbreed between a funeral attender and a salesman. Upon the last day of trial Cobb Vanth lives up to his conservative roots in appearance and in spirit, and he has never felt more hollow.

Coming in to work these days had been horrific. Seeing Din’s name plate on the locker. Eyeballing his vacated desk in the bullpen.

Lonely nights followed. Thoughts multiplied and they were loud. Not that Cobb even for a second doubted Din’s innocence, no, but it became more and more evident that Din had kept secrets from him for _years_ , and Din _still_ refuse to give him details when Cobb asked. Talks with Migs confirmed that something was going on with Din around six months prior to Cobb’s first day at work, the same time period when the victim Kuiil was reported missing.

“Migs told me you started to act strange. He was going through some stuff and could’ve used a friend, but you gave the impression that you didn’t want anything to do with him… I’m thinking you had a different reason,” Cobb said to Din when they were allowed an hour to meet in person.

Din was sitting across from him, shackled and wearing the beige overall of the inmates in protective custody. It broke Cobb’s heart, but he reminded himself to be strong, for Din’s sake. Cobb could sense victory—if only Din would talk.

Din nodded. His voice was monotone and foreign to Cobb’s ears. “Yes, I did some shit off the books and I didn’t want him to know.”

Lie. Cobb huffed in disbelief. “I know you, so don’t expect me to play along in this farse for much longer. _I’m_ the one who will take my liberties with the law if you don’t tell me what you’ve got yourself caught up in.”

Din’s gaze flicked to the security camera in the top corner behind Cobb and back. “Can we talk about something else? I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Normally the request would melt Cobb’s resistance and his heart, but now he just felt helpless, like he was repeatedly ramming his head into a wall. Fuck, he needed a breather. Cobb rubbed his hand across his mouth and looked down in his lap to stem the sudden urge to cry. _Why won’t you fight this?_

“Hey… I’ve been trying to fill my time while I’m in here… does it help you to know that I’ve word-for-word quoted and acted out all the scenes in your favorite movie? Din’s voice was unbearably gentle. He was too soft to be trapped in a facility with all sharp edges and hard walls.

Cobb shook his head. “Don’t have a favorite…” Though he suspected he did.

Din let out a low chuckle. “You have, but it’s a tie. Between Quigley down under and The Man from Snowy River.”

Cobb smiled in embarrassment. “Stop. That’s misleading.” He only re-watched those when he needed an escape from reality. And he’d watched The Man from Snowy River as recent as last night. He bet Din could tell.

“I re-enacted that movie Grogu likes, too. Line for line.”

Cobb laughed breathlessly. He could easily imagine Din walking around in his cell doing that, to the detriment of the other inmates. “Coco? He loves Coco.” _But he’s moving on to ‘Soul’, and you don’t know that._ “I’m lonely without you,” he confessed to his hands. “It has gotten so bad I’m thinking about dating Colin in Armory.”

Din gasped in mock offense. “I thought Colin in Armory was married with a second kid on the way.”

Cobb shrugged listlessly. “We’d make it work.” He simply hadn’t the energy to uphold this banter. For the first time he acknowledged how deep his feeling of betrayal went. “Why didn’t you confine in me,” he whispered, throat hoarse with unshed tears. “You had years.”

Din never told him more than he’d been involved in an investigation that none could prove had ever existed. Which is why Cobb leaves the courtroom in his plain, charcoal suit with the sentence _Guilty on all charges_ ringing in his ears. 

*

“I requested the ‘bubble and bathrobe package’,” Din says when he’s given the towel (it’s not even new) and Head & Shoulders discount rip-off bottles. The guard snorts and leads him to the showers. He doesn’t know Din is a cop, which Din takes as proof that his sense of humor transcends prison boundaries. Cobb will be so proud.

Din thinks Cobb thoughts about fifty more times during his first twelve hours in gen pop. Six of those hours he’s asleep: a restless sleep on a hard mattress that leaves him more tired than he was the night before. He won’t admit it, but he’s nervous. He somehow ended up serving his sentence in gen pop instead of protective custody, which meant Gideon’s influence must reach further than he expected. At least his cellmate seems mellow and uninterested once the are beyond the first awkward sentences.

The mess hall is a risk zone. So far he’s blending in with the crowd, shuffling along with the queue to get his food tray. The murmur in the hall is a constant sea of sound. Words reach him now and then that has the small hairs rise in the nape of his neck, and he braces himself for the day someone announces that he’s a cop.

He finds a chair with a few seats to spare between him and a small group of inmates who usually don’t spare him more than a glance. It’s doable: he can pretend that he’s at his own kitchen table at home, watching Cobb feed the kid with his latest creation of overcooked amphibian.

Then the creak of a rubber chair cuts through his daydream, and a man sits down across from him. The man is tall and younger than Din and with two horns in his forehead filed down for safety reasons. A tattoo of a symbol that Din recognizes runs over the brow bone and down a slender nose.

"Cikatro," he introduces himself with a confident smile.

What are the odds that this young devaronian has distanced himself from the Broken Horn syndicate, Din thinks with a sigh.

“No.” He delivers his answer quick and efficient before he ladles another forkful food into his mouth. 

The devaronian tries to keep the air of laid-back confidence. “No one else will ally with a cop. You’ll be dead within the month and you know it.”

Din finishes his water. “I’ll take my chances.” He observes as much as he can from the closest sitting groups, but there’s no obvious sign that they overheard.

Cikatro suddenly leans forward, sliding Din’s tray to the side to get his attention. “You should have kept looking for survivors, officer. I was beginning to feel left out.”

Din leaves the chair in one fluid movement and takes the tray with him. The shock if it all vibrates through his bones like a hit to a tuning fork. “Still no.”

He stalks off, hearing the chair scrape against the floor and Cikatro’s footsteps behind him, the cheers from the others who think they are about to see a show. He knows what Cikatro want, that he’s to rely a message from the outside or it’s personal but bottom line is: he can’t be associated with another one of Gideon’s victims.

The devaronian places a hand on his shoulder and that’s a mistake: Din hurls him onto the floor, which disrupts a few chairs and their occupants. “You stay away from me,” he warns as he lets go of the man’s collar.

Cikatro’s eyes are gleaming with frustration. “You owe me. I’m rotting away in here!”

“You put yourself in here!” Fuck, they should both stop shouting. Fortunately, the guards are belatedly moving in their direction to intervene. He avoids Cikatro’s half-assed attempts at retaliation and follows the guard’s order to the dot.

He’s led away by a human guard with the sort of rough treatment and venom in his voice that tells Din he’s beyond fed up with his chosen profession.

“You,” the guard snarls as Din is disposed back into his cell. “You’re a fucking disgrace to the badge. I should make sure to drag my feet the next time they’re on you.”

Din stills, standing between a wall he can touch with one hand while being able to touch his cot with the other, and the guard blocking the entrance. It’s been a long time, years, since he’d felt so trapped, but he recognizes the feeling. He wants to find mitigating circumstances and excuses to the man’s ire, but there’s nothing but hate distorting his facial features.

The guard smirks at his silence and calls out for the cell door to close.

*

Then the visitor day arrives. Thought of Cobb and the kid has been constantly on Din’s mind, competing with the fear for their safety. The sight of Cobb in the visitor’s chair is damning. _He’s fading_ , Din thinks in horror. Migs, Leia, Peli, they were supposed to take care of Cobb, but he looks like he hasn’t eating or slept for months. 

Cobb picks at his sleeves, restless and exhausted. “What should I tell the kid? Your son needs you. I can’t… I’m not enough…”

It’s a low blow, conveying the amount of desperation Cobb feels. He’s in pain, and Din’s response is gentle, conveying how much he wants to pull Cobb close and have him rest in his arms. Instead he's the one who keeps inflicting the hurt. 

“You can get by without me. As long as he has you I'm not worried. As long as I know you take care of each other.” His breath shudders as it leaves his lungs. “I will be gone for a long time, my love. You have to… you have to get used to the idea of living without me.”

Emotions Cobb's clogs his throat. He’s grappling with the buttons of his shirt collar for the pendant Din once gave him as a substitute for an engagement ring, but he’s a visitor in jail—it’s not allowed in here. Cobb wanted to get married, but even back then Din must have sensed the impossibility of such a thing, known he’d promise a future he couldn’t guarantee. A jolt goes through him as he discovers the tiny scratches on Cobb’s throat, and he can picture it: Grogu’s tantrum in the kitchen or in the bathroom, soap bottles defying gravity and crashing into tiles; tiny, curbed nails leaving marks on Cobb’s skin as he hushes and holds the baby in a secure embrace under his chin.

Cobb’s voice is raw with frustration. “That was not the deal. That was not the deal,” he repeats, like Din has indeed broken the most important promise. 

Din’s hands twitch with the old instinct to touch Cobb’s cheek, and he curses the distance between them that he no longer has the means to close. His fingers flex around the hand that should rest in his hand, missing the corresponding angles and defects, joints and tendons in Cobb’s fingers, fingers he knows by touch, tongue and heart. “Deals change, Cobb.” _I need you alive._

Cobb’s red-rimmed gaze shoot up, betrayed. Din doesn’t flinch in the confrontation with those beautiful dark hazels, no, not now. He knows he will return to his cell and dream of his beloved. Just like all the nights before he will wake up with a sore throat and the tickling of Cobb’s breathy laugh against his lips, the touch of Cobb's strong, warm hands cooling on his body. He wonders how long these sense memories will last, in an environment designed to destroy every vein connecting him to the source. How many years, how many decades.

Cobb’s angry, no, pleading: his mouth moves but the sounds are muffled, he leaves the visitor’s chair and would’ve tipped it over if it wasn’t bolted to the floor, but his movements aren’t real enough to penetrate the film of indifference pulled down like saran wrap in Din’s mind. _Supposed I have to get used to this feeling_. Din leaves the chair too, leaves the room with the sound of his own breathing rising in his ears, hoping that will be enough, has to be enough for now.

 _Is the silence worth the costs?_ He doesn’t know anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No chairs were hurt in the making of this installment.


	6. Thunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The resolution to the prison angst and instead of a kiss (they have kissed five times) they fuck. (This I state proudly, writing smut is fucking hard.) (sorry for the pun.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t I believe I wrote this, what goes on inside my head? Warnings for explicit scenes regarding violence (I would say briefly), and then reunion sex, as advertised.

The hours Din spends with the rest of the prison population is made bearable by the penal labor and, surprisingly, by his newfound acquaintance with the devaronian Cikatro. The two of them talk about the possibility of receiving a permanent placement in a real labor camp one day, and whether it would equal a death sentence or a holiday. It’s tedious work to stand there in the workshop dissembling and recycling junk, but it could be worse. Cikatro never badger Din these days. The devaronian knows that Din’s under constant surveillance. One wrong move and Gideon won’t only go after Din—he’ll go after his family. 

Cikatro doesn’t have much family to speak of. He’s unaccustomed to the experience of familiar love and protective instincts Din suffers from. Sure, he’s got uncle Burg, but on the other hand: he’s got uncle Burg. Spending your formative years with a man who looked like a brick (in shape and color) and who relied on raw strength rather than common sense and morals, hadn’t been the most ideal upbringing, in hindsight. Maybe Cikatro never would’ve popped up on Gideon’s radar if his uncle Burg hadn’t somehow drawn the commissioner’s ire: maybe Cikatro wouldn’t have to find out the hard way that when Gideon came for you, he came for everyone you’d ever talked to. 

So. Cikatro gets it, and he keeps his mouth shut. Now when he has Din in his corner, he might survive to his thirties too, something he couldn’t allow himself to hope for back when he gave himself the name Cikatro Junior (after the leader of the Broken Horn syndicate). He’d been naive, thinking a false link to a father he never had would somehow protect him in here. 

He swallows down his nerves as he watches a quarren with fat tentacles hanging from his jaw the size of Cikatro’s arms, bump their shoulder into Din down by the depot. 

Din stumbles with the heavy crate he’s lifted from the truck. Sometimes there’s quarrels over the stupidest shit down there—but Din never participates. He walks back inside the shop without a word but oh boy, Cikatro can tell that his friend is itching to go back down there. Din’s mouth thins as the squid head shouts something behind him and laughs. 

Others join in: there’s four other Quarren brothers working in here today and how can they be so unlucky? Cikatro suspects that they have bribed the guards to make this happen. 

Cikatro sits down on his stool and pretends to polish a scratch off his protective glasses as Din places the crate on the table. 

Cikatro gives him a crooked smile. “I haven’t got the energy to kick their asses today, have you?”

He’s never kicked someone’s ass in his miserable short life, and Din has had him figured out from the first day Cikatro tried to unsuccessfully assert his dominance in the cafeteria. Din smiles knowingly and shakes his head, and it usually ends there, with a non-verbal response. 

Together they start to sort the content in the crate between them. 

Maybe Cikatro is still naive, or he’s forgetful. Din’s quiet company makes it easy to relax, and for a moment he disappears back into the dozy but focused state only achieved when he’s bent over a lump of compressed metal and broken main frame. He doesn’t notice at first how a quarren hovers behind his back, and then another. 

He looks up to find Din looking like he’s been seething for some time and holding his drill like he’s contemplating shoving it through Cikatro’s eye socket. 

Din would never hurt him, though. Cikatro searches for the sharpest object within reach, readying for the threat he can’t see. 

“This would be an awesome time to say He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he.” 

Din nods in affirmation.

The quarren laughs darkly and slips his ugly, liver-spotted hand under Cikatro’s arm and around the piece of metal Cikatro had his sights on. “Ew…” he wrinkles his nose at the slimy suction-cups sticking to the material. “I’m never touching that again.”

Then he throws his head back and connects his skull with the quarren’s nose. 

Cikatro knows he’ll be blamed for the ensuing fight—he started it. No, correction: Din vaults over the table a close second after Cikatro’s brave but stupid move. The kick in the face he uses to disorient the other quarren and the machine part he picks up from the table to slam across the first quarren’s head will definitely earn him a month in the hole. Cikatro dives over the table to escape the hold the tentacles still have on him and grapples for anything he can use to cut himself free. Cikatro wonders if he should borrow a page from uncle Burg and reconsider his loyalties should he make it out of this alive. 

It’s as if Destiny is laughing in his face, has been watching from the shadows all this time waiting for him to fuck up like the worthless piece of shit he is, because it’s when that thought enters his mind that the leader with the fat tentacles strides up to him and stabs him in the gut. And again. And again. “Insubordination will cost you.” The quarren holds the shiv for Din to see. “Tell your friends to back off, or your kid will get the next reminder.” 

Cikatro might feel pain for a split second but then it’s just a surging roar of adrenaline in his ears and blood and Din's hands cradling his head and there’s pleading. Cikatro doesn’t know if it’s him making those sounds or not. There’s shouting from the guards and then, nothing. 

  
  


*

Cobb is smelling victory for the first time in months. It’s bittersweet sure, but it’s there. He’s had help from a clandestine gathering of folks that he now considers friends: Migs, Xi’an, Ashoka, Karga and his wife Peli, who’s known Din for almost fifteen years and babysit for them regularly (more frequently now, when Cobb barely achieves to feed and dress himself in the mornings). Boba is there, Cara and even the Captain, who sometimes brings over her husband, Han. The twins, Jaina and Jacen, bring Grogu out to the backyard and let him hang off their backs as they run through their homemade obstacle course. There’s sprinklers, and the laughter that reaches Cobb twists and pokes at something deep inside of him that he thought was dead. 

He doesn’t know if he likes it, if he can bear it. The children are supervised by Leia’s father Anakin, a quiet man due to his lung fibrosis, but it’s entertaining listening to the few words that are spoken.

The two of them are having a beer on the patio, sharing a rare moment of peace and tranquility before the first official summer storm. 

Anakin removes his respiratory mask with practiced ease, sips his beer and indicates the ashen horizon with the bottle in hand. ”It will be upon us within the hour. The kids will love it.” 

Cobb nods. ”Grogu was scared the first time we had a proper storm. I think it was one of those things he couldn’t understand. Now he’s not scared anymore… I even heard him giggling during the last hurricane.” 

Gone are the horrible nights and days when Grogu was inconsolable and mad at the world, when Cobb didn’t know how to soothe him. They’d worked it out together, forged some kind of mutual ground out of the broken pieces from before. He sniffs his nose. 

”I guess the smell I smell is ozone,” he concludes. 

Good fortune—ozone, whatever. He doesn’t care if there’s no connection. They’ve finally been able to put together the million little pieces (a timeline, recovered reports, missing witness statements, missing witnesses) in the scheme chief commissioner Gideon orchestrated for Din, and he can afford to feel good about that. The victim Bernard Kuiil was a retired investigator for internal affairs and he had been in contact with Din, many times in fact, before his disappearance. There was no secret that Kuiil’s distaste for commissioner Gideon had gotten him fired—but not before his reputation had been ruthlessly dragged through the mud: alcoholism and an unhealthy obsession with the people he investigated was just the top on the list of accusations the old man endured before he lost his pension. His co-workers must have assumed he crawled under some rock to hide when he no longer answered their calls. 

Not Din, though. The prosecution produced the evidence of their regular interactions over coffee and breakfast, long after Kuiil was fired (their explanation for why they were meeting was a load of bantha crap, though). It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they kept investigating commissioner Gideon’s ties to the criminal underworld in their private time—until their luck ran out. Kuiil’s body was discovered by a pair of hikers years after his death. Cobb could imagine Gideon’s reaction when the news reached him. Now people would start to look for the old man’s enemies. The commissioner must have been desperate in his search for another suspect. Din’s withdrawn nature combined with his habit of treating his informants and other elements of the criminal underworld with common decency made him an ideal scapegoat.

Cobb startles as Jacen lets out a shout of surprise: Grogu is reaching over the boy’s shoulder, pulling a skipping rope from the ground with such velocity it smacked across Jacen’s cheek. 

“Ouch.” Jacen rubs his cheek, then looks at the skipping rope clutched in Grogu’s fist. “Cool!” 

Cobb hesitates before gingerly leaning back in his chair. “He doesn’t have the hang of it still… I don’t know how to raise a regular child, how am I supposed to take care of a force-sensitive one? And he’s strong.”

He expects Skywalker to hurriedly assure the way others did when Cobb even breathed a word of doubt, that he was a good parent and he wouldn’t screw up his kid as long as his heart was in the right place. Din’s heart was in the right place and look at where it got him. 

Anakin observes the kids from the top of his mask, brow furrowed and shoulders tense all of a sudden. Crap, was he worried for the safety of his grandkids?

The old man shudders like he’s ridding himself of a bad memory and removes the mask with a grunt.

“You’re all right there?” Cobb wonders. 

Anakin does look a bit pale and sad. He ways the issue away with a trembling hand. “I felt a… disturbance in the force. That’s all. I’m sure it’s nothing.” 

“That old thang,” Cobb says, trying to comfort but he has no idea what disturbances in the force are supposed to be. Is it the same as when knees of old men can predict bad weather?

Anakin nods to himself and leans back in the chair, shutting his eyes and succumbing to some kind of meditation. Cobb sits in silence for a while, watching over the kids to make sure they don’t slip on the wet grass and humming an old tune from his own childhood. Anakin eventually clears his throat and speaks with traces of his old confidence and humor. 

“There’s a boarding school for force-sensitives in Coruscant. You should send him there. Who knows, maybe he won’t miss you as much as you think.” 

A round of applause to Anakin’s impeccably delivery. Cobb tilts his head. “I guess. He loves cheese-grated frog and Coruscant is the fondue capital of the galaxy… he’ll thrive like a fish in water.” 

Anakin shrugs, but his face does a poor job of containing his mirth. “You’re an exceptionally supportive parent, Vanth.”

Cobb chuckles and sips his beer. “That’s the compliment I was fishing for.”

  
  


It’s close to midnight when Cobb has ushered the last co-worker/friend/part animal out the door. He checks on the baby sleeping soundly in his crib, before embarking on the tedious mission to clean up the evidence of their enjoyable evening. 

The twins left with their parents tired but content with the play date, and Cobb was lowkey impressed that they managed to retrieve all their toys with one small exception: the rubber head to Jacen’s action figure. Cobb had discovered it in his son’s mouth about ten minutes after they left. 

“Jacen will be very sad to hear about this, young man.” Cobb held the slobbered and punctured head so Grogu could see the teeth marks. 

“...buh?” Grogu’s eyes widened in sudden horror. He loved Jacen! How could this happen..?

Cobb rubbed his downy head with affection. “It’s all right. I know you lose all sense of decorum when you spot a round object. We’ll just have to work on that, won’t we, buddy?” 

It wasn’t uncommon for Leia or Han to return to the house if one of the twins demanded the stuffed animal or other object of the month necessary for sleep. Which is why his alarm bells don’t go off when an inside noise reaches him from the living room. Rain is hurling against the windows and there’s the occasional crack of thunder in the sky, but the floorboards in the living room make a distinct sound pattern that’s easy to identify by now.

”It’s on the coffee table! I tried to fix it,” he hollers from the kitchen. He finishes placing the last terracotta dessert bowls on the highest shelf in the cupboard while he listens for Leia’s reply. 

Nothing. 

He steps off the stepping stool and listens to the by now oppressive silence in the house. 

“Leia? Hello?” 

He has never carried a gun inside his home—that’s a line he won’t cross. Which is why he has to remove his hand from his hip and reach for a kitchen knife instead. Yeah, that will work. Crap. He’ll just have to scare off the house invaders with his toothpaste commercial smile and the promise that he is indeed a former marshal and a cop, which would make him double the threat, the way he sees it. 

He walks slowly towards the door leading to the other room. It stands ajar, but his view is still blocked. “I’m a cop. Two cops live here, in fact. You couldn’t have picked a more burglary friendly house down the street?” 

There’s a flash of lightning cutting through the kitchen, and then he’s slammed against the door, head bouncing off the wood and arm twisted against his back. He shouts in pain as the knife is pried from his hand.

“I’m here to talk.”

It’s a female voice behind him. The grip loosens on Cobb’s shoulders and he’s free to turn around and face the intruder in his home: She’s an asian woman with braids in her hair interwoven with laces the same color as the Red Notice on her head. He has her photograph pinned to the board in the living room that doubles as a headquarters nowadays. 

“Shand. Fennec Shand?” He thought she was dead, like all the others. 

“The one and only, just sort of a few appendages.” She pats her sternum. “I was having a perfectly fine retirement in Hoth before you guys decided to stir shit up.” 

She’s the piece. The missing piece in the puzzle. Cobb will bet his life on it and eat his collection of stetsons if he’s proven wrong. 

He isn’t. Fennec Shand is his deux ex machina. She is the thunder rolling in from the mountains. 

*

The day Din is released he’s picked up by Greef and Peli, with Grogu strapped in the child seat. It’s an ordinary Tuesday with a chill wind, but the baby’s happy squeal when he sees his dad walking towards him chases away every notion of cold in Din’s body. The reunion melts the stiffness in his muscles and relaxes his mouth into an carefree laugh, he knows that it will take time before he manages to carry that emotion with him when his son isn’t there to remind him, but for now he’s content with the feel of cheek pressed against cheek and fuzzy kisses and more laughs. 

Peli has brought him a change of clothes, not just freshly washed but pilfered with the knowledge that these clothes makes Din look good. She’s seen how Cobb gets when his man squeezes himself into those jeans and that leather jacket. 

It’s a nice surprise, and Peli gets it: she gets that Din doesn’t want Cobb to ever have to look upon these fences and walls again, that deep down he’s afraid that Cobb doesn’t want anything to do with him now. 

What kind of friend would she be if she didn’t help him rectify that misconception? 

Din walks through the front entrance of his precinct and it does feel a bit weird to be back after all this time. He has been gone for almost a year. Uniformed officers on their way out are watching him as he walks towards the elevators and he wonders what he is to them now. How deep Gideon’s scandalmongering reached. At the same time he’s grateful to be here, grateful to be alive. He rides the elevator to the fourth floor and thinks of Kuiil, the man who once became so close to him he became a father in Din’s mind, and of Cikatro, who’s in a recovery ward in a real hospital and whose case is up for reevaluation now when Gideon has been exposed. 

He thinks of Fennec Shand and luck, and how lucky he was the day he entered this very floor and saw the man he was supposed to live the rest of his life with. 

“Oh my god… Djarin?” Someone says. It’s one of the technicians. He nods in greeting, too distracted and too close to his goal now to stop. 

“Cobb?” He calls out as he walks through the corridors and enters the bullpen. His co-workers part either by rolling back on their chairs or stepping back sensing it will be their turn to greet him in due time. 

Cobb’s desk is empty. Fear grips him briefly. It’s okay, though, he must be out on a call… Din didn’t specify the day of his release. 

“Din?” 

Cobb looks up from the screen he and Migs and Xi’an have all been engrossed in. He looks like he is seeing a ghost, and like he’s consistently been haunted since the day they parted: he wears dark circles under his eyes and an uneven shave just like Din. He’s thinner but at the same time there’s evidence of recovery: he wears a deep tan that darkens in the dip of his throat and the hairs of his forearms, putting on a show thanks to the warm colored plaid he has on with rolled up sleeves. And oh god his hair is as wavey and grip worthy as Din remembers. He wants to run his fingers through it when he kisses Cobb senseless.

“You’re here.” Cobb lets go of his white-knuckled grip on the desk. “You’re here.”

“Yes. I’m here.” 

Someone whistles through their fingers. It might be Migs. He was never the patient one. Xi’an cheers. 

Din strides up to Cobb, afraid that his presence is unwelcome after all they’ve been through. It’s not a conscious decision on either of their part when he pulls Cobb into a bone-crushing embrace and Cobb molds himself to him with matched ferocity. Cobb pushes his face into Din’s throat and laughs breathlessly, a repeat of what Din felt earlier. “I can’t believe you’re home. You fucking idiot.” Cobb presses kisses to the wetness that’s now dripping down Din’s cheeks; scrubs his sadness away with soft, forgiving thumbs. “You’re such a bawler. Too soft for this world.”

“You are. Remember the first time we kissed?” Din finds Cobb’s lips and takes what he’s been yearning for all this time. They would’ve stayed like that, entangled for the rest of the day and likely forever if it hadn’t been for the collective cheering erupting in the bullpen and rain of hands patting both their backs. Their co-workers surround them from every direction, and somewhere in the midst of it Cobb gives Din a little wink that says they can’t leave until Din has received a hug from every single one. 

That night is not a night Din spends alone in his sterile prison cell dreaming of a fading past. He is back in their bedroom in their house and Cobb looks very inviting and languishing as he stretches out in their bed. Cobb’s tan doesn’t end above his collar. 

“Have you been sunbathing while I was in jail?” Din looks at all the exposed parts of Cobb that Din wants to spend extra time on. The list is long, and growing as Cobb trails a finger down his bare chest and reaches the treasure trail on his lower stomach. 

“I was walking around shirtless a lot when I tended to the garden. I’ve been thinking about installing a pool.” Cobb curbs a finger under the elastic band of his underwear and gives a small preview of where he wants Din’s mouth to go eventually. 

Din forgets what he was about to ask.

“I have follow-up questions.”

“I’m sure you do. Come up here for a sec.” Cobb grabs him by the neck and pulls him down for a kiss. He gasps as Din relieves the tension in his dick by grinding down on Cobb, who’s halfway there. It’s a strange but strangely familiar feeling to be weighed down in his mattress by Din’s body. They stay like that for a long time, kissing, kissing and grinding languorously until Cobb is as rigid and pulsating as Din was half an hour ago.

“What do you want?” Cobb kisses his temple, already covered in sweat. He reaches down and fingers the wet fabric clinging to Din’s erection. “I hope I’m not too forward but would you like to ditch your boxers?” 

He sticks his hand down the offensive garment instead and retrieves Din’s dick, skin to skin. As expected, Din hisses like he’s been stung and huffs his appreciation in Cobb’s neck. “Like that. Touch me like that.”

“It’s too dry, let me get the lube.”

“No! No, I want to feel you, please, please...”Din gasps, and Cobb can’t deny him when he sounds like that.

He adjusts his grip as Din’s hips undulates as by their own accord. He smears his precome right where it needs to be and increases his efforts to make this a pleasant experience for Din despite the desperation and the urgency. They both need a release to remove the chafing layer of newness and awkwardness that’s still simmering between them. 

“Wait,” Din gasps, “w-wait.” He sits up, hand slipping down to grip the base of his erection to stave off the inevitable. His gaze is hungrily mapping Cobb’s body. “I want to take my time with you.” 

“You’ve got time, Din. We’ve got all the time now.” 

Din has waited (impatiently) to touch Cobb for hours now, but now he finds that he wants to take his time: he wants the moment to last and if he finds out tomorrow that it was all just a dream, then he’ll know he made the most of it. The expanse of Cobb’s sweat-gleaming front and the lure of the twisting muscles in his back is more than enough for Din to succumb to impulse, more than enough evidence that Cobb won’t disappear when he blinks, but he can’t take that risk. 

So Din paces himself when he leans down to leave tender bites along Cobb’s abdomen and the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, and he might be shaking violently with tension but it’s worth the sound escaping through Cobb’s throat when Din finally, finally licks a stripe up his cock. He lavishes the head with his tongue, enjoying that musky-bitter taste that’s all Cobb. 

Cobb on the brink of orgasm is an otherworldly phenomenon; his hoarse panting and the occasional swear, the wet and vulnerable aah:s. Din holds on to Cobb’s hips and takes him deep down his throat as he comes. Later, hours later when they pick up for the umphiest time Din makes sure to conjure those noises and that desperation again as he thrusts between Cobb’s thighs. A supporting hand there to shift his weight, an adjustment there to hit the spot… Cobb cries out and wringes his fingers through Din’s hair until he’s sure the roots will leave his scalp. There’s something so fascinating with Cobb right now, how he swells and clenches and rocks back. Din scrapes his teeth wherever he finds a connection; neck, ear, shoulder. He knows what brings Cobb over the brink. 

He vows to repeat the feat often enough so that the echo of Cobb as he comes never leaves Din’s ears. 

He collapses beside Cobb when they’re both spent. Cobb mumbles something that sounds 90% like sex-drunk mumbo jumbo and 10% like high praise for his lover’s prowness. He rolls to his side with an exhausted huff and kisses Din’s lips with so-so coordination. “Goodnight, my love. I’ll reward you with breakfast in bed in the mornin’.”

Din grins and lets his eyelids fall shut to block out the first reys of the morning sun. He adjusts his arm when Cobb snuggles close. “Goodnight.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Kiss suggestions are welcomed.


End file.
